(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an address configuration method, and more particularly, to an Internet Protocol (IP) address configuration method for a terminal in a wireless mobile network environment and an apparatus therefor.
(b) Description of the Related Art
In general, the Internet Protocol version 4 (Ipv4) has a 32-bit address system. However, as the Internet has become more widely used, allocatable addresses have been exhausted. In order to solve this problem, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) prepared the next-generation standard, that is, the Internet Protocol version 6 (Ipv6) having a 128-bit address system.
In the IPv6, there is proposed an address auto-configuration mechanism where an IP address is automatically allocated to a terminal through interaction between the terminal and a network. The address auto-configuration mechanism is classified into a statefull address auto-configuration mechanism where a server manages and allocates an IP address and a stateless address auto-configuration mechanism where a terminal directly generates an IP address and uses the IP address after a server checks address conflict.
In the stateless address auto-configuration mechanism, the terminal generates a 128-bit address by using 64-bit prefix information provided by the network and a 64-bit interface ID generated by the terminal. The prefix information is a unique value that the network side provides to the terminal. The interface ID is a value (a 64-bit unique interface ID) that is generated by using a 48-bit media access control (MAC) address included in a communication network interface card of the terminal in accordance with the EUI-64 ID generating scheme (Internet Protocol version 6 (Ipv6) Addressing Architecture IETF RFC 2373) or a value that is generated at random. An address conflict verification procedure that is performed to verify uniqueness of the generated address is called a duplicate address detection (DAD) procedure. In the DAD procedure, the terminal attaches the generated address to a neighbor solicitation (NS) message and transmits the address together with the message to the network. If a response is not received in a predetermined time interval, the IP address of the terminal is determined to be verified, so that the IP address can be used. However, if the address is already being used by another terminal, the terminal transmits a neighbor advertisement (NA) message as a response. The terminal that receives the NA message generates a different address and again performs the aforementioned DAD procedure. In such an IP address configuration procedure, when address conflict occurs, the aforementioned procedures are repeatedly performed, so that bandwidth, which is an important factor of the wireless network, is wastefully consumed. Particularly, a delay involved in the address configuration deteriorates a quality of real-time traffic and a performance of transmission and reception.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.